The recent outbreak of violence in Pakistan has drawn criticism of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto from within her homeland and has raised concerns in the U.S. about Pakistan’s leadership and future. Twin explosions, apparently targeting Bhutto during her auspicious return Thursday from an eight-year self-imposed exile, killed over 130 and wounded hundreds more.

The problem of habitat encroachment was made painfully clear Sunday when the deputy mayor of Delhi, India, was killed when he fell from his balcony as he was being attacked by wild monkeys. The Indian capital has long suffered an abundance of deviant macaques, partly because of the city’s expansion into natural territory.

Hillary Clinton may be the front-runner, but her campaign has been doing a bit of damage control in Iowa over the senator’s vote to declare Iran’s Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization, a move critics believe is a prelude to war with Iran. Clinton sent out a mass mailing explaining her vote and insisting that she opposes military action “without full Congressional approval.”

In her new memoir, former CIA officer Valerie Plame tells of her shock as the Bush administration presented evidence in 2003 that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction—“I knew key parts of it were wrong,” she says—as well as her take on her outing as a CIA employee.

One by one, the Republican presidential contenders are going a’courtin’, stating their positions on gay marriage, abortion, religion and other high-priority issues of a crucial conservative constituency: the religious right. On Friday, Mitt Romney made his case to the Values Voters Summit, gingerly handling the matter of his Mormon faith, while Giuliani pitched woo on Saturday.

J.K. Rowling, author and creator of the phenomenally successful Harry Potter franchise, revealed to a packed Carnegie Hall on Friday that Albus Dumbledore, the revered Hogwarts headmaster in her book series, is gay. When her announcement sparked a round of applause, Rowling said, “I would have told you earlier if I knew it would make you so happy.”

The British government’s Foreign Affairs Committee will look into charges by a number of sources, including human rights groups and a retired U.S. general, that sovereign British land has been used as a CIA “black site” prison. The island of Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean, has been leased to the United States and is the site of an American military base but remains British territory.

The voters of Louisiana are very close to electing as their governor Bobby Jindal, a conservative Republican congressman of Indian descent. While the chattering class is preoccupied with whether the nation is ready for a black or woman president, the conservative Republicans of Louisiana, many of whom once threw their support behind former klansman David Duke, seem to have moved on.

Nobel-winning scientist James Watson, half of the DNA-pioneering team Watson and Crick, is undergoing a firestorm of criticism for recent comments he made in London’s Sunday Times about how he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours—whereas all the testing says not really.”

House Democrats managed to pick up a few more votes for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, but not enough to override the president’s veto. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised to keep fighting for the overwhelmingly popular program: “In the next two weeks we will send the president another bill that insures coverage for 10 million children.”